Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
The Almighty Buck Your Rights Online

Our ATM Is Broken, Go To Jail 575

Actually, I do RTFA writes "This community recently discussed possible criminal prosecution for people who took advantage of faulty slot machine software. At the time, many here drew an analogy to a hypothetical ATM that dispensed too much money. Well, apparently, that too may result in criminal charges. Although they suspect that someone may have tampered with the ATM, they are considering charging anyone who got extra money from it." Here is an editorial musing on the morality of such unexpected windfalls.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Our ATM Is Broken, Go To Jail

Comments Filter:
  • by HitekHobo ( 1132869 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:09PM (#20035295) Homepage
    Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
    • by slickwillie ( 34689 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @07:18PM (#20035985)
      A long time ago we opened savings accounts for our two kids, $100 each IIRC. There was no activity except interest for years. One day I looked at the statements and in my son's account there was a deposit for something like $100,000 or so. Then a few days later there was a withdrawal for the same amount. But the interest of over $100 stayed in the account. We never said anything and neither did the bank.
      • by vought ( 160908 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @07:46PM (#20036237)
        That's a real dumb thing to do; every deposit over $9999.99 is subject to tax reporting.

        You should report the incident immediately to the bank and the IRS. Otherwise, they will screw you to the wall for money laundering.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          Surely they wouldn't be that stupid and would allow a slight leeway either way on the threshold...

          All those deposits of 9999.99 would look rather suspect in your bank account which I am sure would raise a few red flags... but a once off of 10000.12 could just be someone paying for a second hand car etc.
          • by vought ( 160908 ) on Monday July 30, 2007 @01:20AM (#20038809)
            All those deposits of ($)9999.99 would look rather suspect in your bank account which I am sure would raise a few red flags

            The whole point of my post was that no Federally significant flags go up until you break the six nines barrier.

            Most banks give not a shit (and will actively avoid caring) if you serially deposit $9899.47 every night at 8:53 p.m. Nor do they have to report it to anyone.

            However - if you start depositing $10,000.00 once a year, everyone starts paying attention to what you are doing, provided you weren't under suspicion already. It's relatively easy to get a warrant to monitor an account, but regular biweekly deposits just short of $10k don't raise an alarm. Otherwise, most of Silicon Valley's senior marketing folks would be under the Federal gun.
            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by jrumney ( 197329 )
              Having had some experience on the periphery of KYC software, I can tell you you're wrong. The six nines is one of the checks that rings alarm bells on personal accounts, but there are plenty of others, serially depositing lower amounts being one of them.
        • by sallgeud ( 12337 ) on Monday July 30, 2007 @10:42AM (#20042629)
          Let me help this out here. I used to work for a bank. Deposits of significantly less than $10,000 are analysed by a group of people in virtually every bank. More notably, if these are frequent cash deposits of amounts even over $1,000... you're likely to be reported. Now days, virtually all transactions over $2,000 that aren't obvious things like paychecks are analyzed by people within the bank to determine if reporting to the IRS is necessary.
    • by fermion ( 181285 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @07:55PM (#20036313) Homepage Journal
      It is the lack of symmetry that bothers me. For instance, a while back a bad check was improperly credited to my bank account. As a result, i bounced many checks and had no money. If I had been worse off, i could have been in real trouble. Fortunately I was not living paycheck to paycheck, so I had time to get the matter cleared up. Clearing up this matter required a trip to the bank and signing many papers. Note that the bank had a copy of the check, and the account number the check was deposited to was not my own, so they could have fixed the error themselves, if they pleased.

      So here is the issue. They can bankrupt me with no significant repercussion, and don't even have to make an effort to correct the mistake unless I beg them to do so, but I have to immediately report any mistakes they make. Now, if I could claim treble damages for any mistake the bank made, and double digit damage for any mistake that was not fixed 24 hour after a report, then perhaps I could agree to civil prosecution for taking advantage of a defective machine.

      Breaking a machine, or in this case taking advantage as a broken machine is criminal activity. But unless I can prosecute the CEO of bank for criminal negligence when I have no money for week due to the firms mistake, then I don't see how the bank should charge me for criminal activity when their machines give me $400 instead of $100. At most, like they do when they screwed me over, I should asked to give the money back, and perhaps, if necessary,pay a small fine. Note, however, that the bank does not offer to pay me for my inconvenience.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by qeveren ( 318805 )
        I have to wonder if I'd be justified in pressing criminal charges when a bank's ATM dispenses a little brown slip of paper instead of a $20, or even better, a counterfeit $20. Both of which have happened to me. oO
      • by AHumbleOpinion ( 546848 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @10:25PM (#20037519) Homepage
        Breaking a machine, or in this case taking advantage as a broken machine is criminal activity. But unless I can prosecute the CEO of bank for criminal negligence when I have no money for week due to the firms mistake, then I don't see how the bank should charge me for criminal activity when their machines give me $400 instead of $100.

        The first time is an accident and you should not go to jail. However, if you continue asking for $100 then you are knowingly comitting a crime and should go to jail. I expect that the people to be prosecuted are those who engaged in the latter.

        They can bankrupt me with no significant repercussion ...

        You can sue them. And if the CEO knowingly repeatedly "improperly credits a bad check" he can go to jail to. Things seem perfectly symetrical to me. Either compare one accident to one accident or repeated abuse to repeated abuse, not one accident to repeated abuse.
      • by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Monday July 30, 2007 @06:06AM (#20040197) Journal
        While I sympathise with your predicament, my experience is that the situation isn't that lopsided.

        First of all, IANAL, so take this just as someone searching Wikipedia for you, with the usual caveats that means. I say that because I'll take a bit of a legal definitions detour, but that's not really that necessary to illustrate the _moral_ point I'm making, so feel free to skip it if you want to.

        The key element in any conviction in the western law system is the "Mens Rea", or "evil intent". (Well, literally "evil mind".) There are various degrees of it, ranging from premeditation (you actually planned ahead to do harm) to negligence (a reasonable person of average intelligence should have seen how an otherwise well meant plan could go wrong and harm someone.) "Criminal negligence" is somewhat a misnomer, in that it's usually not criminally punished, unless it was "gross negligence", meaning it involved "wanton disregard for human life". I.e., unless an ATM was dangling from the ceiling and fell on you, it won't qualify as such.

        You'll probably have no case at all, even civil, unless it's the previous degree, namely "Willful blindness". I.e., someone had more than ample warnings that something can go bad, or it was blindingly obvious that it will cause harm, but they choose to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

        Why I took that legal definitions detour is because it codifies the basic underlying moral idea: was it deliberate? Did that person _intend_ to do something wrong? Did they _know_ they did something wrong? Did they do anything to rectify the problem _if_ they became aware of it?

        (Also, I don't know about the USA, but in Europe we have this clause that you can't keep an undeserved gain, even if it was an error. E.g., if you transferred some money to the wrong account by mistake, even if the recipient didn't know about it, they still have to give you your money back. That's another codifying a basic moral idea: money gotten by someone's error aren't yours to keep.)

        And in that aspect, the bank doesn't seem guilty at all to me, and the situation isn't as equivalent as you paint it. Sorry.

        1. The bank certainly didn't intend to rip you off there, and they _do_ correct it when they become aware of the problem.

        1.a. I can assure you (well, second hand, because I have friends who worked for banks) that banking software is among the most tested and reviewed software ever made, ranking up there with the stuff they run in airplane control systems. Banks not only are more carefully monitored by the government, but also live by their reputation and face bigger money problems. Noone wants software who makes gross mistakes. And not just for little fish like you and me, but they also deal with massive corporate funds. Software which gets a brain-fart for a $100 transaction, well, you can see the problems it could cause when it does a $100,000,000 transfer for a takeover.

        Most of the problems involving banks are human errors, like an absent-minded dolt putting a pack of $100 notes in the $10 tray of the ATM. And even those are very rare, actually.

        1.b. At any rate, they _do_ fix the problem when they aware of it, and even offer assistance for your own problems, like when you entered the wrong sum or destination account. (As a personal anecdote, they sure have been nice and helpful when I typoed the sum I transferred to my insurance... by omitting the decimal point.)

        And to get back to that moral point, you can't fault them for not automatically fixing something they don't even know about. So until you go tell them about it, wtf do you expect? Telepathy? By your own tale, you needed exactly _one_ trip to the bank to solve it, which doesn't seem that tragic.

        2. By comparison the folks ripping off an ATMs and the like are not in the same category at all. You do count the money you get from the ATM, don't you? So you'd _know_ something went wrong. Plus there are cases where it's been deliberate by any reckoning. There are people who went back and took
  • Employers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by HomelessInLaJolla ( 1026842 ) * <sab93badger@yahoo.com> on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:10PM (#20035307) Homepage Journal
    How about employers who make direct deposits to your bank account and then, four weeks later, send a collection notice saying,"Ooops. We overpaid you."
    • every one I've seen specifies in the event of an error in your favor, you have pre-approved them to just direct debit your account.. no notice required...
    • by Duhavid ( 677874 )
      How about employers that decide to close down the company,
      dont tell any of the employees, cancel the automatic payments
      late, such that some go thru ( and are reversed, milliseconds
      later ), and some dont. Yep, they used the "we claim the
      right to correct errors automatically" clause with a
      "we didn't mean to pay you the money you had earned and
      we owned you, cause we need it to keep the company going,
      never mind we mismanaged things to get to this point, and
      some of you have forgone pay to make ends meet".

      And to
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        They could, in theory, do that to you. However, I had an employer one time try and withhold payment, and I politely informed him that this was a 3rd degree felony according to Texas State Law 61.019. FAILURE TO PAY WAGES; CRIMINAL PENALTY, and that I would be filing a complaint with the Texas Atty General. Needless to say, I got my money the next day.

        This was in Texas, so I do not know the righs in other states, but I guess that other states have the same type of laws (I hope).
  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:12PM (#20035325) Journal
    This is yet more evidence of how materialistic our society has become. It is NOT a crime to not report the observation of a beating or death. Yet it is a crime to take advantage of a faulty slot machine? Something is F'd. Big business has too damned much influence over the laws of this country. They don't care if people die as long as they get their fucking loot back.
    • by kannibal_klown ( 531544 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:28PM (#20035497)
      If this happened to me during while the bank was open, I'd go inside and let the tellers and/or manager know. After all it wouldn't take me too much time, it would be the "right" thing to do, and I wouldn't have to worry about getting in trouble. I mean I'm there anyway already, so why not just tell them.

      If this happened to me while the bank was closed, which is a good percentage of the day / week, then it gets annoying. It's one thing to pop my head in and say "Excuse me, but bla-bla-bla" but the only time I'm free when the bank is open is Thursday nights (for 1 hour) and Saturdays. So it's a real hassle to:
      • remember about it the next day
      • wait until I have the extra time to call from my job (since there isn't a branch near my work)
      • lookup the number
      • get past the annoying automated touch-tone-service
      • speak to a manager
      • etc
      But I guess if I didn't do all of that, then it's my fault they screwed up.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by SolitaryMan ( 538416 )

        I once received an extra $1.5k on my bank account by mistake. I didn't tell anyone, but didn't withdraw money either. Then the managers from the bank called me and told that correspondent bank wants the payment back.

        When I came to bank and talked to like 5 different managers they told me that there is nothing they can do and that they don't know where this money should be returned.

        Here is what happened: the Company A sent the money to my bank account through an intermediate bank B. Bank B processed the

    • Not reporting a beating etc is not reporting a crime. That would be comparable to not reporting that people are ripping off the ATM. Actually participating in the crime is a different matter.

      Taking stuff that does not belong to you is a crime. If you help yourself to goods from a store because the clerk had stepped out the back for a pee is a crime. Taking money from an ATM that is wrongly configured is also a crime.

      • Re:Broken argument (Score:5, Insightful)

        by polymath69 ( 94161 ) <dr.slashdot@NoSPam.mailnull.com> on Sunday July 29, 2007 @07:25PM (#20036049) Homepage

        Taking money from an ATM that is wrongly configured is also a crime.

        Since ATMs are opaque and you cannot see the contents of the money bins until you have taken money out, you have to do the "crime" before you can know that the ATM is misconfigured. Thus you are already a criminal. That doesn't make sense. Crime has to have an element of intent. If your only intent was to withdraw money owned by you from your own account, clearly no wrongdoing was intended.

        But going back for seconds, after having noticed the mistake... now you're talking criminal intent.

  • Where is there an ATM that does anything in increments other than 20?
  • by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:14PM (#20035347) Homepage Journal
    as the article says, the machine knows who got too much money and didn't come forward about it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by barik ( 160226 )
      I have never, ever in my entire life had a bank, mortgage, or a credit card company call me to apologize or fix their error when they have either double-charged me or misapplied a payment. When this occurs, I end up discovering it ON MY OWN by examining my own bank statement and then calling the bank and talking with random people for several hours to correct the situation.

      So, tell me, why should I extend the bank the same courtesy when it's in my favor?
  • by JohnnyGTO ( 102952 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:14PM (#20035353) Homepage
    when that bank errors in your favor, your screwed but when the bank errors in their favor, your screwed?
    • It's not a conspiracy. That's just good business.
    • Um... no. If a bank errors in their favor, they make up for it... unless you can come up with some sort of example of it. There have been plenty of times when an ATM screws up and doesn't give me the cash yet still deducts it from my account, that later on they put that money back in. Why should the opposite be any different?
      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by SamP2 ( 1097897 )
        That's why:

        If the bank screws up, at most they will give you your money back. This often involves that YOU have to (a) notice the error, (b) complain about it, and (c) see through that you actually get the money, which may involve going several steps up the chain of the command (do you think the local bank teller has the authority to give money to everyone who says they should have it?).

        If you miss either of these 3 steps, it's quite possible the bank will never return the money. And since it takes quite a
      • But they never cover your expenses and God help you if their error bounces checks you wrote.When was the last time any bank apologized to your creditors or helped take you of Telechex?
        • Actually this wasn't me but my Aunt in this case... But my Aunt had automatic bill pay set up w/ her bank (I think Whitney) and the bank goofed and mailed the check to the school her kids attend late. The school charged a late fee of $200. The branch manager got on the phone and called the school to beg them to forgive the lateness as it was due to their screwup, and not hers. The school refused, so the bank cut my Aunt a $200 check.

          So yes, banks do take care of your customers. If yours doesn't, why are you still banking there?

  • "The next morning when we had come back in, someone had plugged it back up," she said.

    Well, if it was plugged up I don't see why they were concerned about it giving out money...
  • Bug Abuse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SamP2 ( 1097897 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:15PM (#20035365)
    Didn't your local friendly MMORPG teach you the consequences of exploiting bugs?

    Seriously, just because you were not the one who hacked the thing, doesn't give you the right to exploit the flow. It's like stealing stuff from a shop because the window was broken by someone else.

    Accidents do happen, and it should be the burden of the prosecution to prove the defendant knew of the exploit, and not vice versa, but if you see someone withdrawing 1 grand (max daily limit) from a machine that happens to give out $20s instead of $5s (especially if person never previously withdrew such large amounts), and of course the person conveniently "forgot" to check the amount he got, then you got a pretty good circumstantial case of malicious intent, and then the defendant better have some good justification for these actions.
    • Seriously, just because you were not the one who hacked the thing, doesn't give you the right to exploit the flow.
      Can similar logic be applied to an AC who makes around 30 posts at ten minute intervals [slashdot.org]? Regardless of how you feel about the subject matter of that thread it's pretty obvious that the admins don't care.
  • by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:16PM (#20035385)
    Because bank lines were cut, some banks did NOT turn off their Manhattan ATMs so that customers could obtain emergency cash. Of course, when this was discovered, this was abused. I havent heard of the followups of any persecutions, if any.

    FEMA disbursed cash with low identity proof threshholds because the assumption was many people lost their IDs during the disaster. This was abused (and mocked in the media). FEMA is trying to collect the cash, but many of the thieves dont have much. Its a dilemma: damned if you are too tight with aid; damned if you are too loose.
  • ATM screw up (Score:5, Interesting)

    by klwood911 ( 731463 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:19PM (#20035421)
    I personally ran into this problem myself. Back a couple of years ago, I drove up to my bank to get some cash. A guy came out of the ATM with a big sh*t eating grin on his face. I went in and chose to get $60 cash and was then handed $120. Just my luck!
    When I came out, he asked if the same thing had happened to me and I said yes. We both left and went about our ways.
    An article showed up in the news paper that had explained that a programming up date that had been updated that day had caused the machine to dispense double your withdrawal. In turn, the bank would withdraw the money from your account for the additional money that was dispensed.
    I would think that they should eat it as it was their mistake (they have insurance), but the other side of it is that I don't think I should go to jail for some guys programming error.
    • Re:ATM screw up (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gregor-e ( 136142 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:58PM (#20035803) Homepage
      You wouldn't go to jail for some guy's programming error, you'd go to jail for not returning what wasn't yours. Why do we feel this compulsion to take advantage of somebody else's bad luck, when that other entity is a corporation? The bank doesn't deserve to 'eat it' just because they're a bank. And insurance is merely a way to average out the cost of disasters over time and people, it doesn't wave a magic wand and make the cost go away. When there is a claim, insurance premiums go up, by more than the claims. What were your parents teaching you when you grew up?
  • This one of the ATM's that is still set to the default password?
  • by Ritchie70 ( 860516 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:30PM (#20035527) Journal
    So, there are some people who took advantage of an ATM defect (whether bug, intentional, or accidental programming error, error in loading cash, whatever.)

    The bank knows who they are.

    Why don't they just debit their accounts the correct amounts and forget about it?
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Its Not that easy to debit an account.
      I just came back after writing my Banking Law paper.
      A bank is essential a loanee of your funds.
      Without your clear unambigous instructions in writing, they can't touch a cent.
      If they do, they are liable criminally for fraud.
      So just randomly debiting an account does not fly EVEN if the bank made a mistake.
      The only recourse open for it to is to request you to repay the amount and/or sue you.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        Without your clear unambigous instructions in writing, they can't touch a cent. If they do, they are liable criminally for fraud. So just randomly debiting an account does not fly EVEN if the bank made a mistake. The only recourse open for it to is to request you to repay the amount and/or sue you.

        I wish you would explain this to the bank I used in college. I had a checking account with a few hundreds dollars in it. Since I had moved several times during college, I found it easier to leave my parents' mailing address on the account. After nearly five years with this bank, I got married, opened a joint account at another bank, and kept putting off doing anything with the old account.

        A few months later, my mom handed me a stack of mail from the bank. Mixed in with my monthly statements I found a

  • How big must the 'windfall' be before we report it? When you're checking out at the supermarket and you notice your item rang up for $2.99 instead of $3.99 that it was supposed to, do you say something? Most of us probably wouldn't say anything, but would raise hell if it was supposed to be $3.99 and it rang up for $4.99. If it's just a $1 difference in our favor, we don't report and let it slide even though we know it's an error in their system. Is that now a crime? If not, then where do we draw the line? If $1 in our favor is not a crime, but say $100 in our favor is, what's the cutoff? Does this just apply to ATM/Slot machines? What if I bought ten items that were $1 off, do I report it then? How about fifty of those items?

    It just seems to raise too many questions.
    • by Sabalon ( 1684 )
      So many places have sales, discounts, loyalty cards and stuff, half the time I wouldn't know if the lower price was a mistake or a promotion. The clothing store Goody's was pretty bad for this - you'd find something, see it was 20% off, but it rings up even more off.

      then there is the oblivious factor. If I put a dollar in a slot machine, I'm not sure I'd notice if it gave me extra credits.

      Then again, one penny over the price and I'm sure we'd complain like you said. :)
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Spikeles ( 972972 )
      Most major supermarkets where i live(Australia) actually give you the item for free if the scanned price is different to the advertised/labelled/listed price as part of their policy.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      Since some supermarkets were fraudulently mismarking prices in my area some years ago, a law was passed to force supermarkets to GIVE AWAY items under $10 with mismatched in-store (product label VS cash register) prices. For items above $10, they have to deduce $10 off the lowest price or give it away. So here, reporting supermarket price mismatches is now always to the customer's advantage. With measures like this, store managers are now double-checking their prices to avoid this law getting extended to co
  • by FlopEJoe ( 784551 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:46PM (#20035681)
    A mini - Ask Slashdot and way more likely. :

    Your groceries come to $7 something, you hand her a $10, she gives you $12 something (ie. change for a $20). What do you do? I've seen two reactions to this: what I've seen my parents' do... I tell her I only gave her a $10 and worked it out. Did that in front of a friend and no amount of reasoning seems to stop his whining:

    him: "You idiot! You could have had $10 bucks."
    me: "It's not screwing the man... she's responsible for her till."
    him: "It's like she dropped it on the street and you found it."
    me: "Not even close... it's like I SAW her drop it and have the chance to return it."
    Aannnnd... end scene. I seriously could not understand his reasoning and he couldn't understand mine.

    Although, I have to admit, if something rings up lower than it's real price and the cashier wont get screwed, I'll probably not say anything.

    Anyone else?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by blitz487 ( 606553 )
      I'd reconsider why I considered this person my friend. Give him a chance, and he'll take advantage of you, too.
  • by Stanislav_J ( 947290 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @06:50PM (#20035713)

    The face-to-face equivalent of this is: you purchase a $5 item. You hand the clerk a $20 bill, He/she proceeds to give you three 20's in change instead of 3 5's. If you choose to say nothing and keep the money, then (1)is that "wrong," and (2)is that theft?

    For the most part, honesty and fair play normally demands that you point out the error. After all, anyone can make a mistake when distracted, and the bottom line is that money will come out of the (probably very poorly paid) employee's pocket when the register doesn't balance at the end of the day. For me, I would be honest most of the time, but it depends on how I've been treated in the course of the transaction. For example, once at a Wal-Mart the clerk clearly rang the purchase up wrong, and gave me about $10 too much in change. When I politely tried to point that out to her, she got very huffy and defensive and insisted that I didn't know what I was talking about and that she did not make such mistakes. Needless to say, I pocketed THAT Hamilton. But is that "theft?" The possibility never occurred to me, and I've never heard of anyone being arrested for getting too much change and not returning it.

  • OFFS (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pbjones ( 315127 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @07:11PM (#20035917)
    taking stuff that don't belong to you is theft. Which part of this concept is so hard to understand???
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wolfemi1 ( 765089 )
      I think the sticky part is the "stuff that don't belong to you." If the owner of something gives it to you, isn't it yours? It's more complicated than you make it out to be.
  • Call me Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)

    by soundhack ( 179543 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @07:27PM (#20036063)
    But for a while now I've taken it on faith that when i withdraw $100 in $20 bills I get 5 bills. I take the money and stuff it in my wallet without counting it, mostly because sometimes I withdraw from not the safest neighborhoods and I don't want to be standing around flashing cash while I count.

    Does this mean that if I am guilty of being lazy/preoccupied/safety conscious and not count my money after withdrawal I could go to jail?

  • by jridley ( 9305 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @07:34PM (#20036135)
    IMHO these people are certainly guilty of something, though IINAL so I don't know exactly what. They took advantage of a situation and took money they clearly realized was not theirs. I don't think this is any different than walking out of a store without paying if you get to the front and find the cashier is in the bathroom. I've said it before, these are not difficult decisions; you know what's right, you just need to choose to do it. "Stickin' it to the man" is simply rationalization of your own immorality.

    What's sad here is that apparently a couple dozen people found out about this and it nobody had the honesty to report it.
  • by slickwillie ( 34689 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @07:36PM (#20036145)

    Maybe they got some of their voting machine code in there by mistake.

    if (Republican)
    {
          Total += 20;
    }
  • Moral Solution? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @07:37PM (#20036165) Journal
    My solution to situations like these which makes me feel morally happy is to inform the relevant person/business and then let them fix it. If they don't then I take it to mean that they don't care and are happy for me to keep the money. The nice thing with this is that generally the companies which give rubbish service end up screwing themselves since they are ignore my informing them.

    For example when getting too much (or too little) change returned I'll point it out and then it gets fixed right away. However as a grad student we had a really terrible company running the pay phone in our student hostel who would take ages to fix problems and never refunded money when the phone swallowed money without giving credit. So when burglars broke open the cash box below the phone we informed the company and true to form it took them over a week to send anyone to fix it. Lets just say that in that time we all more than recouped the cost of all the money it had swallowed previously (it was in the UK and we had an American, Italian, Australian and Malaysian in the hostel in the time before really cheap international calling!).

    The nice thing was that because we had informed the company of the break in and damage in advance when they tried to recoup the missing money from the college they (and us) were covered legally (they refused to respond in a timely manner and therefore were liable). The other great thing about this was that afterwards response times on problems dropped to same/next day!

    So does this count as completely moral behaviour? Given that the same company had screwed us in the past by not refunding money swallowed by the machine, that we did inform them of the issue beforehand and that I was not one of the people making long, expensive international phone calls I did not have a problem with it. Indeed I think it was a rather good example of poetic justice.
  • From Experience (Score:5, Interesting)

    by socz ( 1057222 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @09:13PM (#20036995) Journal
    I didn't come across a lot of posts from /.'s who've worked in financial institutions. So, let me clear some things up. Forgive me if the exact details are off but it's been almost 10 years since i worked on the customer service side.

    - Any large cash transaction needs to be reported. I believe the amount is $10,000. You can deposit checks that are larger than this amount, and they do not need to be reported. There should be no way around this, even if you make 2 separate deposits at two different times on the same business day. A total $10,000/min limit exists for this report. And for those of you wondering, this isn't an uncommon event in a bank that works with businesses primarily.

    - All money is accounted for, and double checked. So if you "deposit" more money than you were supposed to, its actually really easy to find out who's it is at the end of the day. Believe it or not, it is also easy when the CSR is short to find out who owes the money. Once the error is found, it is fixed immediately by debiting or crediting your account.

    - There is nothing you can't do in a bank. If you have a check to deposit, and they want to put a 1 part or multiple part hold, don't be afraid to ask them to release more of the money right away or sooner. Oh wait that has nothing to do with this, but is still helpful. Always talk calmly and don't get upset!! The bank can almost always help you out.

    - Accepting deposits has never been a problem, and even though bank of america sucks, and might require some form of ID, if i recall correctly, as long as they get "A" form of id, they'll take the deposit. I have done this for a friend many years ago, and they took my drivers license as the ID.

    - Withdrawing money is a different story all together. When i worked on the CSR side, we were required to contact the customers home branch and request a fax of their signature card. That card is exactly what it sounds like, a card with their signature, but with a date and a bit of other useless info. The customer always has to sign a withdrawal slip or a check to cash on the spot, so you have proof of their signature. You compare that signature to the signature cards and if it's a match or close enough, they get their cash. When customers change their signature, and this is admitted on their behalf, then they are given a chance to write out their old signature. If the signature was close, then we'd look at the other info on the card to try to prove that it really is the account owner.

    - With cards having magnetic stripes now, this is much safer, as long as no one has your PIN. But the signature above part is still important in case the ATM eats your card or it's lost/stolen. So make sure you take care when signing for a new bank account.

    - ATMs are stocked with a LOT of cash at some point of the day, sometimes multiple times. Although i never really got to get a GOOD look at the machines, i was assured by everyone and the techs who went out to service them that "they don't make mistakes." Now, check my signature

    - When an ATM dispenses money and it doesn't add up when the machines are checked, you pull up the records of it's transactions. And like i said before, and difference is easily found. In the cases that i've been aware of where large sums of money were paid out once or repeatedly, their cameras have come into play to help identify the end user. Regardless, the card holder is responsible. If the card was stolen, used and an extra $3,000 paid out, the account holder is responsible. That is why you MUST call and report your lost/stolen card immediately!

    - If you are even short changed at an ATM, make sure to report it immediately to the branch if they are operating under normal business hours. If they are closed, call it in immediately and find out what you are required to do. Under normal circumstances you will get your money either through credit to your account or cash on the spot.

    - One guy on /. said that he o
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by EZmagz ( 538905 )
      I worked in an internal ATM Help Desk department for one of the biggest 5 banks in the US for about a year and a half, and you bring up some really good points regarding banks. Man, what an absolutely miserable 1.5 years of my life. One important thing I pulled away from the experience though is that I learned how frequently ATMs have mechanical failures, and to [i]always[/i] get a receipt with your transaction. Always. And that banks pay their employees absolute shit.

      ATMs are stocked with a LOT of cash at some point of the day, sometimes multiple times. Although i never really got to get a GOOD look at the machines, i was assured by everyone and the techs who went out to service them that "they don't make mistakes." Now, check my signature

      The amount of cash can actually vary g

This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered french toast in the renaissance. - Steven Wright, comedian

Working...